


Parental Bonds

by Randomblackberry



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, From KH1-2, Gen, Parent OC fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 04:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Randomblackberry/pseuds/Randomblackberry
Summary: Miku Hikari was thirty-six years old, married, and her only son was dead.There are several stages of grief a mother goes through, but Miku goes through none. In her eyes her child is alive.(Then she forgets she has a child)Then he comes home.





	Parental Bonds

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a backlog of unpublished KH fics sitting around so y'all are in for a treat. This one is just a quick one I wrote once again for an amino challenge a couple of months ago. 
> 
> For readers of 'meetings we do not see' please wait! I haven't made as much progress as I'd like but it is coming along!

"Sora. Dinner's ready. Come on down. Sora?"

-/-/-/-/-/-/

Miku Hikari was thirty-six years old, married, and her only son was dead.

The word tasted foul in her mouth, and her mind instantly rebelled against it. She didn't believe that Sora was dead but nobody else seemed to agree, all sympathetic gazes and pitying pats and empty reassurances, but their eyes betrayed their true colours and she'd heard her husband and friends talking about funeral arrangements already.

Nobody believed he was alive but her.

Sora, Riku and Kairi had gone missing, away on the play island when a storm had attacked. Once the seas were calm again Miku had rowed out there, where it was eerily untouched apart from a few fallen trees. She'd called for her son and his friends until her throats had gone hoarse and she'd had to be dragged away.

It had been three days. Just three days. Maybe this was a prank Sora was playing on her. A horrible one, mind, but she wouldn't care, not if it meant he was alive.

A week later funeral arrangements began on a church in the mainland. Miku's protests fell on deaf ears. People began to whisper at the intensity of her grief, as if belief in her son's continued existence was strange. Therapy was suggested, as if talking to a shrink could help change the fact that they were proclaiming her son dead.

That her son maybe was dead.

That day Miku started writing her eulogy.

Then Kairi came back.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Miku could still remember when Kairi came to the islands, a small girl with a shock of red hair, a colour not native to them. She'd practically washed up on the shore like something out of a movie, splayed like a starfish, seashells around her neck. She couldn't remember where she came from, but her and Sora clicked almost instantly.

This whole scenario gave Miku a strange sense of deja vu.

"You had amnesia," she echoed, mind still struggling to take in the girl before her, fidgeting on one of the dining room chairs.

Kairi nodded anxiously, avoiding her gaze. "Yeah. I washed up on the Mainland, and...well...didn't know where I was, or who I was. And then I woke up one morning, and just...remembered. All of it,"

It sounded almost too convenient to Miku, and the story had too many holes to count. But Kairi looked so vulnerable sitting there, hands twitching by her sides, eyes fixed on the ground that she couldn't help believe her.

And what reason would Kairi have to lie? How would it benefit her in any way?

And if what she was saying was true then she didn't know about Sora and Riku. About whether they were alive.

Miku swallowed past the lump in her throat and put on her most convincing smile. "It must have been scary,"

Kairi flinched slightly for an instant before she caught herself, schooling her expression into a more neutral one and fixing her posture. "Yeah,"

There was silence. The only sounds in the air were the insistent ticks of the clock and Miku's own haggard breathing. Now that she thought about it, she felt oddly hot. Maybe she was coming down with something. She hadn't exactly been taking care of herself over the last while. 

Finally Kairi broke the silence. "You look...well,"

Miku knew that was a lie. Her brown hair was greasy and untamed, having not been washed or even brushed in more than a week. In an attempt to hide this she'd pulled it up into a messy high ponytail, which did little to hide the grime and only let tendrils of hair loose. It didn't help that it was due for a trim either, uneven strands brushing against her dulled blue eyes, which accentuated by the bags under them, standing out like purple bruises against her pale skin. She was the picture of absolute inelegance, dressed in a hoodie several sizes too big and a baggy tracksuit. She hadn't been expecting visitors. She certainly hadn't been expecting Kairi.

"Thank you," she smiled politely. "You do as well,"

That wasn't a lie. Kairi was still unmeasurably beautiful. But exhaustion and stress had left its mark on her too. Her skin was unusually pale, her usually bright eyes dimmed. The smile she had on her face didn't seem to come as easily as it used to, plastered on and artificial. 

And there was fear in her eyes, although of what Miku could only imagine.

"And Sora?" she dared to ask, already knowing the response.

There was that flinch again, and Miku readied herself to be told the same things everyone told her about Sora. About how he was dead, but surely happy in the afterlife. About how it was sad, but she had to move on, get on with her own life.

Kairi's hand crept over the table to clasp hers, skinny fingers intertwining around her own.

"Please," she said, looking her right in the eye. "Don't give up hope,"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Miku wished she had a child.

She didn't know why they'd never had one, not really. It probably had something to do with finances maybe. Or they'd just been too busy.

There was a room at the end of the hall that Miku never opens. The handle lies underneath a cover of dust, but fingerprints still decorate the doorframe, from a hand too small to be hers. Miku figured that if they had a child, that was the room they'd stay in. She never goes in, never cleans it up, or airs it. There was no point, really. It would just be an empty room devoid of character, with nobody to ever inherit it.

"I wish I had a child," she found herself saying to one of her friends one day as they sat on the front porch, basking in the sunlight.

Miku and her husband lived in a nice house, if a little backwards. Everything down to the little fence in front of their yard was made of polished wood, giving the house a warm rustic feel. It was too big for two people. And since most of the time her husband was away at work, a mansion for one.

That was why she spent so much time with her friends, when they weren't busy being mothers and coddling babies and grounding children. Being out of the 'mother' group probably lost her friends, actually, everyone either pitying her or feeling unsafe around her, just because she didn't posses their motherly touch.

At least she always had one good friend to count on.

Ayane looked at her curiously, brown hair falling over her eyes. Miku always found it fascinating how similar she looked to Selphie, her daughter. Miku couldn't help but wonder if her child would be the spitting image of her just like Selphie was of Ayane.

"You still can, you know," Ayane encouraged, before cracking a smile. One of her front teeth were crooked, jutting outwards at an awkward angle. She thought it was hideous. Miku thought it was kind of charming. "You're not that old,"

It was a dangerous conversation, one that filled Miku with longing. She wanted a child so badly, but at the same time, having one now just seemed wrong. Having a child felt like she was betraying someone, although she didn't know how, or even who.

"No," she settled on, even as her own answer felt like a knife twisting in her gut. "I would have wanted them to grow up with Selphie and the others,"

Ayane nodded slowly. "If you had a child..." she spoke cautiously, every word measured and calculated. "What would they be like?"

If the last topic of conversation was dangerous, this one was downright toxic. But Miku found it didn't sting as much as she expected it to, and that she already had a perfect image in her mind. She didn't really know where it came from. She'd never really given it much thought before, the concept only ever bringing her pain. It was strange then that she could imagine this non existent child of hers down to the necklace encircling his neck.

"I'd want a boy," she began, even though inwardly she blanched. Hadn't she always wanted a girl? "He'd have brown hair like me, but untameable like his dad's," she laughed a little at the mental image, of a smaller version of her husband with hair sticking up in all directions. "We both have blue eyes so I guess he'd have them too. But maybe brighter? And bigger? They'd shine like the ocean. He'd have big feet," she chuckled to herself as she started down at her own giant feet. "Just like his parents," the novelty wore off as soon as it had arrived and Miku sighed, resting her head in her palm. "He'd be loud, and exuberant and the happiest and most beautiful boy in the world." her eyes fell to the ground, her voice cracking. "He'd be the best of both of us,"

Ayane was silent for a moment, but when Miku raised her head to meet her gaze she was smiling at her, squinting against the sun.

"I can imagine that," she said quietly, and then reached over to squeeze Miku's hand. "What's his name?"

Miku opened her mouth to reply with the name that had been perched on the tip of her tongue. 

But nothing came out.

There had been a name. Miku had been sure there had been a name. Ayane was still looking at her demanding an answer, and Miku panicked, trying and failing to find that name, the perfect name for her perfect son.

And then she found it. Not the the name, but a name, and although it wasn't right it didn't feel wrong either, felt like an imitation of the name she'd had in mind, but in no means a bad one.

"Roxas,"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Miku remembered Sora.

She went into his room, the one she refused to enter, and wiped away the dust and cleaned out the mold gathering under the bed. She smiled once she finished, the room still like Sora had left it, the previous day's clothes, dumped haphazardly on the floor.

It was such a bright room, full of life. Miku thought that maybe now she had cleaned it, somehow Sora would come home.

He didn't.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Miku set the dinner table for three again.

It had been a habit she hadn't been able to get rid of ever since she'd remembered Sora. Every time she lay eyes on that extra plate she would clench her fists and focus on her breathing, blinking tears out of her eyes.

Then she moved forward, picking up the plate with more force than strictly necessary to put it away in the cupboard.

Or at least that's what she tried to do, before the sound of the doorbell interrupted her. She put the plate back down in Sora's spot, approaching the door with heavy footsteps.

Outside was her boy, her beautiful son, older and taller and tired but with that unmistakeable twinkle in his eyes that defined him. She wrapped her arms around him before he could even speak, resting her head in his mess of hair.

"I'm home," Sora said, in a tone a lot lower than she remembered.

Miku pulled away, wiping a stray tear away from her cheek. She smiled, and for the first time in a year it was a genuine one.

"Dinner's ready," she said, and led him to the spare place at the dining table.


End file.
